[SerialEntrepreneurs.]

Please review Medical Records - Personal Health Records and let us know your thoughts if you think this service can charge a nominal fee of $19.95 or if it remains FREE would you be suspect? With nearly 1,000 registered users, I have told the CEO of the company that they should begin to test a $19.95 yearly fee but they fear b/c Google and Microsoft are offering a free service that they too must offer a free service.....your thoughts???

thanks!
Andrew

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What value is added to Google and Microsoft's services to warrant the annual fee?

[pboychuk]

Maybe try a tiered service, im not sure if thats possible

[SerialEntrepreneurs.]

Originally Posted by jmenq2

What value is added to Google and Microsoft's services to warrant the annual fee?

Google and MSN do not charge....Google will of course monetize the site with ads words.....viagra alone generates about $20M a year for adswords.....

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Originally Posted by SerialEntrepreneurs.

Google and MSN do not charge....Google will of course monetize the site with ads words.....viagra alone generates about $20M a year for adswords.....

Hold on. I'm confused then. Why is the CEO to whom you're referring concerned with Google or MSN? Are they competitors?

[ASJ]

Personally, I'm not sure if I would pay $19.95 a month for the service. I think if it was marketed to a specific group, like home-based care givers (of the elderly) or something like that it would be helpful for their clients.

I don't see myself adding in all of my personal medical information onto a website, especially if I have to pay for it.

Of course, that is just my opinion. Maybe I'm a little lazy when it comes to that.

[ASJ]

Originally Posted by jmenq2

Hold on. I'm confused then. Why is the CEO to whom you're referring concerned with Google or MSN? Are they competitors?

It sounds like MSN and Google offer similar services for free. His question is whether or not to charge for the service...especially since they offer something similar for free.

Also, he mentioned that they make their money through adsense, where he wouldn't be able to do that.

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If they offer a similar service, if you want to charge, you better be damn sure that you're providing a product that adds value to what your competitors are providing, and doing so to the extent that the perceived value added exceeds the fee you're charging.

[Woodcs82]

If google and microsoft have a similar service and are NOT charging, that is a no brainer, you have to NOT charge as well.

[cutebeast]

1. Pay something to keep information online - for other to read only based on a pin.
- How secure is this?
- If you sign up and you are drop dead how will they know this is the card that access to this page that have your medical record?
- What is your unique feature?

Answer the above question and you will be able to find a reason to charge your visitor for $$$. But again having just 1K registered user don't exactly mean you are having a lots of user. If I were to do this I might want to think of a way to better bring in even more traffic having the setup running, provide discussion channel for the site to grow then I will look for those drugs store and extort them for money.